The University at Albany's ITS Telecommunications department has established criteria for the placement of individual firewall devices, approving their use and establishing a set of standard configurations. These devices would be periodically reviewed to determine if they are still being used, require patches, software upgrades and/or configuration changes.

Networked computers that are running a non-University or non-vendor supported operating systems (OS) require a firewall. Reasons for relying on a non-supported platform may be due to software that has not been ported to a newer operating system or specialized hardware within/attached to the device which cannot be supported by a new OS. The initial step in evaluating a non-supported platform should be to determine if there is a method available to upgrade the platform. Barring an upgrade, the use of a stateful firewall is mandatory.

The recommended solution is a hardware-based firewall. These purpose-built appliances provide a layer of protection between the network connection and the computer to be protected.

Individual firewalls placed between the University network and the non-supported platform is the University solution. Although the physical connection is within the department, the firewalls are centrally managed and configured.

In order to ease the deployment of these individual firewalls, the recommended firewall uses bridging technology rather than routed technology. The use of a bridging firewall negates the need to change network settings to both the computer and the campus dhcp servers.

There exists the possibility for supporting 4 connections if they are geographically co-located using a single firewall device. Although the possibility for cross contamination if one of these connections is infected, the risk to the University’s network is minimal.

The cost for this service is $1,250 for setup and installation with an annual maintenance fee of $150.

You must contact the Telecommunications Service Center to arrange for this service. Please contact the TSC via email telecom@uamail.albany.edu or call them at 437-3800.